The food industry is increasingly moving away from one-way trip cardboard boxes into returnable, re-usable plastic crates, particularly within the supply chain. PPS Equipment Management Ltd will not only rent you plastic crates, but actually manage them for you as well – in other words they get them back from your customers!

Measham, Derbyshire April 2009

Aware of the trend from all business sectors not only to become more cost-effective but to lessen their carbon footprint, PPS answers the need for a food crate that is not only re-usable (in fact some crates within the PPS system have been in continuous use for more than five years) but is also fully recyclable.

It’s a simple system – PPS rents a food crate to the food processor that in turn uses this to package his goods which are sent to the wholesale outlet. This transaction is entered onto Enable, which is the PPS proprietary online asset tracking system. From this information, PPS will arrange collection of used crates which are washed at a PPS location before being re-introduced into the system.

Crate hire is a viable alternative to outright purchase by food processors – why? Renting crates and using a professional company such as PPS to manage them (and their whereabouts) offers a number of advantages such as no need for initial and ongoing capital expenditure, no repair costs involved, no embarrassment or awkward confrontations at customers who have “lost” your equipment.

Plastic crates are more robust than a cardboard equivalent and will hold more products without the risk of collapse or crushing under load. If there is a downside to these plastic crates it is that they are very attractive and so are very easy to “misplace”! And this in another reason to use PPS who will actively manage any crates rented from them on your behalf and take responsibility of retrieving them from your customers.

Hiring plastic crates relieves the headache of firstly finding sufficient capital expenditure to feed the logistics requirements. During peak production periods or spikes, PPS will provide extra crate hire on an ad hoc basis.

PPS has several years experience in crate hire and will work closely with customers and all third parties to ensure smooth movement of crates and trays throughout the supply chain – in the food sector from ambient to chilled to frozen PPS crates are used in the poultry, beef and pork sectors with a substantial new outlet for crate hire into the fish farming industry currently under way.

As well as crate hire and rental, PPS have invested heavily in large scale, state-of-the-art wash lines that allow them to add the extra service of washing and sterilizing crates returned from hire.

At their Midlands location large industrial wash lines continuously wash plastic crates, plastic trays and plastic pallets. Spare wash capacity is sold on the open market.

Crate hire has now become a mature aspect of the PPS operations with hundreds of thousands of crates circulating throughout the UK on short- medium- or long-term rental contracts. The addition of the wash operations in the Midlands around two years ago has given PPS the benefits of an all-round crate hire and equipment management system bringing extensive benefits throughout the supply chain.

Iain McArthur, Managing Director of PPS Equipment Management Ltd added “Our crate hire operations started with a single account at a poultry processor in North Wales around six years ago, although it took almost two years of negotiations to bring the client on board!  At that time we were a bit green when it came to managing a pool of rented crates, but fortunately all ran smoothly from day one. In fact this client saw such an immediate benefit to his business not only in financial terms, but using us to manage the fleet of rental crates freed up a considerable amount of management time and resources, that we were recommended to a sister site that started crate hire with us within weeks of commencement of the original contract.

There is no doubt crate hire is here to stay and PPS is at the forefront of not just crate hire but the consolidation of tray and crate hire into a complete equipment management system.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 11:44 am and is filed under crate hire .